fic: Threads | The Social Network | Part Four
Masterpost | Art by eiirene | Art by lovesletyoudown | Art and Fanmix by sweetmadness379
Prologue | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Epilogue
The divorce has been coming along horrifyingly fast. It's a surprisingly quick process, even for people with their assets, when everyone has really good lawyers and nothing's being contested. They've never been in the same room when dealing with it: Eduardo has his lawyers, and Mark has his own, and their mediator mediates between the two teams. Their presences are barely required.
Mark is understandably surprised when he gets a call from one of the associate lawyers informing him his presence is requested at a meeting sometime in the upcoming week, and would he and Mr. Saverin coordinate their schedules to be available the same days and let the firm know?
Mark asks Eduardo why, and Eduardo shrugs and tells him they can both be free on Thursday. Mark's too busy wondering what the lawyers want to ask what'll happen to Eduardo's lunch date.
They drive in together, because Eduardo's the only one of the two of them that actually knows where the mediator's office is. Their lawyers offered to pick them up, but Mark hadn't bothered to reply and Eduardo had politely declined. They're five minutes early to the meeting, but their legal teams are already there, and they're forcibly separated as soon as they walk in.
Eduardo is pulled to the other side of the enormous conference room's table, and when Mark looks at him across the gleaming expanse, Eduardo looks just as bemused as Mark feels. They've never faced each other across one of these before. Mark wants to smile, and his lawyers, when he finally lets them have his attention, look concerned.
"Alright, let me start things off," says the mediator, who Eduardo had informed Mark was called some very severe name Mark had promptly forgotten just like the first dozen times he'd heard it. "You both know why we're here?"
"We're getting divorced," Mark says helpfully.
Eduardo gives him a look from the other side of the table. Mark raises his eyebrows back. This guy is probably an idiot, and Mark wouldn't put it past him to legitimately forget what everyone is there for. Even if he hadn't - since he likely hadn't - a little bit of sarcasm never killed anyone.
"We're still having trouble finishing the division of assets," Eduardo's lawyer says, looking somewhere around Mark's forehead. She probably had a class in law school that told her that was a good, convincing substitute for real eye contact. It isn't. "We've been discussing it for a good week now, but there's no way to make this one point overlap."
"Neither of your legal teams has been given enough leeway to negotiate," the mediator says helpfully. "So we're going to go over this point today and hopefully come to a resolution. If you're both amenable, while you're here we can also get confirmations on the rest of the assets, so we can discuss any conflicts that might crop up there."
Mark yawns. Eduardo, the hypocrite, covers his own mouth while glaring at Mark.
"What's the conflict?" Eduardo asks.
The legal teams get going. They talk, not quite over each other, but each as if they're fighting to clarify an important point. Since they haven't even answered the question yet, Mark doesn't think the clarifications are really that important, but stopping them to say so would probably set them back another twenty minutes. Instead, he bites his tongue and wishes Eduardo had let him bring something to write on.
Almost half an hour later, Mark figures out that the problem asset is the division of their Facebook shares.
He frowns, listening more closely, and it takes almost an hour and several questions from Eduardo - who, Mark is glad, at least looks no less lost than Mark feels - but finally they explain the problem.
Basically, there are two parts to it: the first and primary one, for the purposes of the divorce, is how many shares Eduardo's team wants to get won't reconcile with how many shares Mark's team wants to give. Secondly, and much more complicatedly, is the fact that they don't agree what shares, exactly, they're dividing, because it's never been made clear.
"He started with thirty, I started with seventy, it's been divided and changed from there," Mark says. "What's the problem?" They've got contracts, dozens and dozens of them, saying exactly what percentages they each have now.
"Yeah, but I know what they mean," Eduardo says. He's frowning. "The contracts about Facebook have always specified us individually - what you have as CEO, what I have as CFO. But legally, being married with no pre-nip, we're one person. There's confusion about whether to treat those as joint assets like everything else or whether the business contracts supersede."
"So?" Mark says. "One of those routes must be legally correct. We can't be the only couple that've had this problem."
"No," Mark's lawyer says. "And normally, we'd each argue to get the best deal for our client, and that would be that. However, your instructions for the shares don't match your spouse's instructions for them."
"What does that mean?" Eduardo asks.
"Your request," Eduardo's lawyers says, "would only be possible if we viewed the shares as pooled assets, which then would be divided unevenly. Mr. Zuckerberg specified you retain the percentage you own as an individual. We can't meet both requests, and we can't argue the numbers until we agree how to view the shares."
"Pool them," Mark says. "Divide them unevenly. It doesn't matter."
"I don't understand how it matters either way," Eduardo says. "I only want five percent."
"Five percent above the twenty you already had or five percent plus half of the pooled ones?" Mark asks, confused.
"That's the problem we've been struggling with," Mark's lawyer says.
"No," Eduardo says. "Five percent, period."
Everyone in the room goes quiet. Even the mediator seems to be gaping a little.
"What?" Mark strangles out.
Eduardo smiles, a little lopsided but sincere. "I'm still getting half our bank account and keeping my position as CFO, with various oversights built in that are supposed to protect me if you decided to fire me next week. I don't need twenty five percent of Facebook, too."
"But you own it," Mark says. More importantly, Eduardo's earned it. He frowns. "Don't you want it?"
Eduardo opens his mouth and then shrugs. "It's not a question of want," he says, but his voice goes up like a question on the end, and Mark isn't going to understand this. How do you not want your share of something you made?
"Look," the mediator says. "This should be a fairly simple problem to resolve, when we get down to it. Mr. Zuckerberg wants to give Mr. Saverin half the total shares, and Mr. Saverin has only requested five percent. Splitting the difference, when both sides are willing to give up so much, shouldn't be difficult."
"I don't need more than five percent," Eduardo says.
"Why?" Mark says. "Why that number?"
Eduardo shrugs again. "It's what the other founders have, right? Like Dustin."
"Even Dustin has more than five percent," Mark says. "And Sean."
Eduardo at least twitches at the mention of Sean. He only says, "Still. It's just because it hasn't been diluted. I would want a static five percent. I might end up with more than Sean or Dustin by the time the company goes public."
"But you're not Sean or Dustin," Mark says. "You own-"
"Don't you want the majority shares in Facebook?" Eduardo interrupts.
"I already have them," Mark says, because technically, for all intents and purposes, he does.
"Yes, but this would be extra security," Eduardo says. "It'd be good for you."
"And what about you?" Mark insists, and they go like that until lunch.
Mark just doesn't understand, and he's never going to. Eduardo is never going to convince him that taking only five percent, dropping almost fifteen percent, just giving them away, isn't like throwing them away.
"I'm throwing them to you," Eduardo points out. "And it'd make no sense at all to go with your plan for giving me exactly half. If I have to deserve more than five percent, then explain to me how I deserve half the total?"
"Legally-" Mark starts, and then his lawyer interrupts with, "That's what we're here to determine, it's still a grey area," which is just him trying to protect Mark from saying something stupid, probably, but Mark still wants to kick him.
"And that's lunch!" the mediator interrupts cheerfully, and the room half empties before the last syllable leaves his mouth.
"Come on," Eduardo says. "Let's get out of here."
"Why?" Mark repeats on their way down, for what feels like the hundredth time.
"Nope," Eduardo says lightly. "We're on lunch break, no talking about legal things."
They get sandwiches at a little deli around the street, then bring them back, park again, and sit on the benches in front of the law office. It's hot outside, hot enough to prompt Eduardo to take his suit jacket off. Mark pulls the sweater Eduardo had insisted he wear off, too.
"It was less work to get married," Mark says, complaining, and Eduardo snorts in agreement and steals half of Mark's sandwich because he doesn't like his own. It's technically breaking the rule about legal talk, but that must only apply to specifics, because Eduardo answers him.
"That's one of the things a lot of people complain about today," he says. "Too easy to get married, too difficult to get divorced." He takes a bite and chews. "Or too expensive," he adds thoughtfully, through a mouthful of food.
"Not if you don't have anything for them to take half of," Mark says.
"No," Eduardo says. "There's state and lawyer fees, too. Ours is costing tens of thousands of dollars, you know. Even average people, I think it can cost a couple thousand, especially if there are kids."
Mark shakes his head, and they talk about Facebook the rest of lunch.
When they get back in they go in circles a little longer, until Mark finally snaps, "If you don't want a part of Facebook, just say so. I'll buy all the shares from you, we can do it fairly."
Something complicated and almost frightening happens on Eduardo's face, and he looks at Mark for a long time, and then he nods once, sharply, and agrees to take his original twenty percent. It shouldn't feel like such a victory, getting him to merely keep his original share, but it does. It pales in comparison to how giving him half would've felt, knowing there was that extra incentive or insurance to keep him where he is, but the one thing this divorce has taught him is when to take what he can get.
The lawyers spend the remainder of the afternoon describing the rest of the asset division and waiting for objections that never come. The only point of interest is hearing that Eduardo's given the house to Mark, and Mark thinks about the house Eduardo just bought and wonders what the lawyers would say about the addition of new assets. It's only vaguely interesting to contemplate.
At the end of the day, they're released from the office with a promise that the paperwork should be finished in a few weeks and they'll be kept updated.
---
And suddenly it is done.
Mark is going to be out of the office all day tomorrow while they finalize the divorce. He doesn't like leaving Facebook unattended, and yes, while that's what the thousands of employees are for, he doesn't have to be happy about it.
"Mark, if you come in one more time under the pretense of worrying about Facebook for one day when you will still be in the same city, I am calling Chris and telling him you're having a nervous breakdown about signing the papers tomorrow," Dustin finally snaps, and his eyes are wild enough that Mark believes him.
"You've gone in and yelled at him eleven times since ten a.m. this morning," Dustin's assistant informs Mark helpfully as he obeys Dustin's instructions - or cowers under his threat, but anyone who says that to Mark's face will have worse to deal with than a worried Chris - but even she kind of ducks and looks away when Mark glares at her.
Mark has to talk to Dustin twice more that day, however. He actually has to, and he keeps the visits as short and impersonal as possible. He thinks he's succeeded, because Chris remains safely elsewhere-that-isn't-Mark's-office, but he tries to work late, just a little, just until seven, and at seven fifteen Sean shows up and drags him out of the building.
"Dustin called me," Sean says. "I'm your intervention."
They go to a bar eight blocks down, this kind of dumpy little place that's quieter than Mark expected. Sean seems familiar with it, moving about with ease and comfort, and he pushes Mark at a small metal table with matching hideous chairs before going to order their drinks for them.
He sets them on the table, says, "Gin and tonic, drink up, you're gonna talk this shit out to me or they're sending you to a shrink."
"For a divorce it'd be a therapist, not a shrink," Mark says.
"They're sick enough of you right now they'd probably find a way to make it a shrink. I'd be surprised if drugs didn't get involved."
"I haven't even been around Chris recently," Mark mutters.
"No, because Dustin told me - before he took off at four thirty this afternoon, he says the extra half hour is asshole tax - you haven't been around Chris since he made you really uncomfortable and you started avoiding him," Sean says unsympathetically. "Now drink and start talking."
"I don't like gin and tonics," Mark says, but he picks it up anyway.
Sean mirrors him, taking a few large gulps before setting the glass back down. "Well?" he says.
"Fuck off," Mark says. "I don't have to tell you anything."
"Depends how much you value your friends," Sean says, casual like he isn't throwing stones from a fragile vantage point.
Mark grabs his drink, leans back in his chair, and decides not to speak a word.
Two hours later, Sean is on his third drink, Mark is on his fourth, and Mark has said a great many things he never meant to say out loud. He's grateful already that Dustin sent Sean and didn't try to come himself. There are things Mark can get away with around Sean that he can't around Dustin, because Sean isn't and doesn't pretend to be friends with Eduardo.
"Now, really," Sean says, in a sort of slow drawl that's his biggest tell. This is what he actually came to talk about. "I didn't want to get involved, but now I'm completely out of the gossip loop because I thought I didn't want to know. What happened between you and lover boy?"
"Nothing," Mark says dully.
"A divorce, come on, that's a big deal. One of you must've stepped out of line big time. You know I heard he's cheating?"
Mark doesn't know if it's the casual mockery of whatever mistakes might've ruined their fake-marriage or if it's the denigration of Eduardo, but he can't keep his mouth shut. "Sean!" he snaps. "Nothing happened."
"If you say so," Sean says blandly, looking over Mark's shoulder as if immensely bored.
Mark hates when he does that. He slumps further into the booth and fumes.
"Dude," Sean says. "Mark."
"What?" Mark snaps.
Sean sounds uncharacteristically cautious as he says, "You know you're-I mean, you know I hate to do this counseling shit, but when you're clearly not happy-"
"Why does everyone want to make me talk about this?" Mark asks. "Of course I'm not happy."
Sean looks at him.
After a few seconds, Mark starts to feel uncomfortable. He shifts. "What?"
"You don't want any of this," Sean says.
"No," Mark says. "Of course not." He barely restrains himself from saying duh or something equally juvenile.
"So why are you getting a divorce?" Sean all but yells, and Mark snarls back, "Because he wants one!"
Sean glares. "You're going to do it just because Eduardo wants to. You've never done that before, and now's the time you decide to start indulging him."
"He deserves it," Mark says. He grits his teeth.
"You haven't even told him you don't want to get divorced," Sean says. "I bet anything. Fucking pussy."
"I did," Mark says. "Didn't work."
"Why not?" Sean demands, and Mark doesn't know what to say.
"Because," Mark says. He shrugs. "Because he married me to get a green card. He has it."
"He's had it for a while," Sean says. "Why stay married before?"
"Because there wasn't a reason to get divorced before," Mark says. "Now there is."
"Tell him you don't want to," Sean says.
"No," Mark says. Eduardo would listen, because he cares about Mark. They'd still get divorced eventually, but it might take long enough to ruin Eduardo's new relationship, or it might not be enough of a delay in the inevitable to be worth the hassle. Either way, Eduardo's earned this one consideration from Mark.
"You can't sign those papers," Sean says. "Dude, I'm serious, you really can't-"
But Mark means it when he says, "I'm going to."
"Mark," Sean snaps, suddenly serious.
"It's not real," Mark says. "It never was. There isn't anything there to be real. Everyone thinks we were together, but we never have been."
He expects Sean to keep protesting, to crack rude jokes, to insult Eduardo's ability to put out and start talking about consummation.
He doesn't expect Sean to roll his eyes and say, "I'm not an idiot, Mark, I know you two have never gone past the awkward best friend thing, but that doesn't mean there's nothing there."
"You know?" Mark asks blankly. He's gotten so accustomed to hearing the opposite that he's nearly more ready to believe Sean is lying now, to be perverse, than he is to believe Sean actually knew.
"Yeah," Sean says, looking at him as if he were an idiot. He was always one of the few people that could do that and make Mark believe it. He still is, and the realization makes Mark uncomfortable. He fights the urge to look away. "I know. Apparently I was the only one, because the rest of your friends are fuckwits, but I know."
Mark blinks. "How?"
"I know you," Sean says, shrugging.
"So do Chris and Dustin," Mark says.
"No," Sean says. "Not as well as I do." He stops, shaking his head. "Or, all banality aside, maybe they know you too well."
Mark frowns. He doesn't understand.
Sean watches him appraisingly for a minute and then nods, apparently satisfied. "Now are you going to shut up and listen to me?" he asks. "I might be able to help you."
"I don't need help," Mark says.
"Bullshit," Sean says.
"There's nothing that can be helped," Mark amends.
"If you say so," Sean says. "Now seriously, shut up for two minutes."
Mark grabs what remains of his fourth drink and drains it.
Sean sighs again, slumping back in his chair, and the tired expression on his face, rarely seen, pulls wrinkles up in the corners of his eyes and mouth. Mark always forgets how much older Sean is, not least because Sean being nearly thirty is incomprehensible. Thirty would be - an adult, a milestone beyond twenty-some years. Thirty is almost half the average lifespan. And Sean rarely looks it or even tries to, but right now he is an adult.
Mark is now the age Sean was when he found Mark. Eduardo is even older. Mark doesn't know where the years went, doesn't know how five years could've passed and nothing could've changed but Facebook.
He realizes, suddenly, why Eduardo is doing this. He isn't that invested in Etienne - Mark was right about that. But he's more aware than Mark, always has been, and the half-decade of static motion must've chafed. Mark doesn't like when things change unless he's the one changing them, but he and Eduardo haven't changed at all.
"You remember when we met?" Sean says. "You were so easy to impress."
Mark shrugs. He was, but Sean was also more impressive then. He tried harder. Now, he doesn't. Maybe he doesn't feel like he needs to. Maybe he can't. Mark had attributed Sean's differences to his own growth, his own realization of Sean's stupidity and unique genius and the balance between those two accounts. He'd never considered that maybe Sean had done some changing too.
"It made you easy to persuade. Except I couldn't get you to do one thing. I wanted to keep you away from Eduardo," Sean says. "I would've if I could have gotten away with it."
"You thought he was bad for Facebook," Mark says. This is old news. Sean had thought so. Mark had even, occasionally, agreed.
"No," Sean says. "Yes, but no. I thought he was bad for you. And for Facebook through you."
Mark blinks. "Eduardo has never done anything to me."
"He helps you," Sean says. "He makes you calm down and step back and think. He makes things easier. He makes you stupid and normal and he makes you happy."
The only thing Mark can think is that he needs to deny it. He can't, not quite, because Eduardo does do all of those things, but the way Sean's talking, he doesn't sound like he's saying Eduardo does those things; he sounds like he's saying Eduardo is the only cause of those things, and that's not true. Plenty of things make Mark happy.
Mark says so.
Sean waves a hand. His drink, sweating on the table in front of him, is untouched. "He makes you happy," he says. "You made Facebook because you were angry and powerless and wanted to do something big. Eduardo could've ruined all of that, because, for you, he makes all of that go away."
"He helped build Facebook," Mark says. He frowns when Sean makes an exasperated noise.
"Yes, he did, but he didn't have to," Sean says. He leans forward again abruptly, looking intent, and this would be more familiar but there's no smile or sneer or secret hidden in his face, just a blank honesty Mark doesn't know how to interpret. "Look, you're not getting it. If you could have only Facebook or only Eduardo, which would you choose?"
Mark has to think, letting the idea push at the corners of his mind, teasing with possibility and disappointing in its inflexibility. He watches the beads of condensation slowly slide down the side of Sean's glass. His palms are wet from his own glass. He doesn't have an answer.
"Do you know?" Sean prompts.
Finally, reluctantly, Mark shakes his head.
Sean looks disappointed. "Well," he says. "Never mind."
"What?" Mark presses. He needs to know what Sean has to say. Sean always-
-Mark has to know.
"Back then," Sean says. "I've always thought that if you'd gotten Eduardo back then, he'd take away everything that made you great."
"Yes, you think he would've made me happy," Mark says, because he understands this. "You think I wouldn't have needed Facebook."
"I know you wouldn't have needed Facebook," Sean says. "Sure, you still probably would've built it, because you're you, but you wouldn't have needed it."
"I don't know if I would've chosen Eduardo or Facebook back then, either," Mark says quietly, but he almost doesn't want to admit it, not even to Sean.
"Like I said," Sean says, raising his eyebrows. "You are you."
Mark mimics Sean's earlier posture, slumping completely back in his uncomfortable chair. It feels good to sprawl once in a while. "Okay," he says.
"No," Sean says.
Mark needs to go home, to their quiet and familiar almost-cluttered house, to Eduardo on the couch waiting for him with too many blankets. Mark refuses to imagine the possibility where Eduardo and his blankets aren't there. "What?" he asks, dragging his eyes back to Sean.
"I'm glad to see you get with the program," Sean says. "But there's one more thing you need to think about."
"No," Mark says. "I can't. I need to-"
But Sean is nothing if not a relentless bastard. "What about Eduardo?" he asks.
"What about-that's what I-" Mark says, struggling to push his chair back. He jostles the table, and the glasses on it rattle.
"No, I mean what do you think Eduardo would choose?" Sean asks. "Would or would've, now or then. You or Facebook?"
But it's not really a question. Sean knows the answer, everyone they know knows the answer. Eduardo never would have chosen Facebook. It wouldn't even have required consideration. And that hasn't changed in the intervening years.
Five years ago, Mark's own indecision would've made him furious with Eduardo, and Eduard's apathy toward Facebook as anything but a business to run or an extension of Mark would've been unbearable.
Mark is old enough now to acknowledge that, five years ago, he really was an asshole.
Sean nods slowly. "Now it's okay," he says. He reaches out and picks up his drink. The ice is completely melted. "Look," he adds, after barely a sip. "I don't understand Eduardo and I have no intention of trying to, because he's your problem."
Mark nods.
"So I don't know what the fuck he thinks he's doing," Sean says. "But you can't sign those papers tomorrow."
"I have to," Mark says. From the way Sean's face falls, he was obviously expecting the answer would change.
It's Sean's specialty, making the hard or impossible sound easy. Eduardo would choose Mark over anything. Mark can't say the same, but an even tie is the best he has to offer and Eduardo does have that.
"Nobody wants you to sign them tomorrow," Sean says. "You don't want to. Chris and Dustin don't. I don't. Not even Eduardo wants you to."
"I have to," Mark repeats, because he knows he's right.
Sean closes his eyes for a long minute. Mark watches him blink and wonders how difficult it is for him to say all this and why he's bothering. "Why?"
"Because nobody thinks I will," Mark says.
Sean's brow furrows.
"Everyone expects me to refuse," Mark explains. "I could, and I could make it so difficult for Eduardo to divorce me he'd eventually give up. I could keep him, and he'd forgive me for it."
"Yeah?" Sean asks slowly.
"Everyone expects me to do that," Mark says. "Maybe even Eduardo." Probably, definitely, always Eduardo.
"So you're not going to," Sean says. "I'm still not following."
"I'm going to sign because nobody thinks I will," Mark says, giving up. He stands, snagging Sean's drink as he goes. "I enjoy being contrary."
"Mark-" Sean says, half-rising.
Mark steps away, raising Sean's glass to his mouth. The water is still perfectly cool and completely free of alcohol. Sean blinks at Mark's lack of surprise.
"I'll see you," he says, and walks alone out of the club.
Nobody expects Mark will, because Mark is inherently and shamelessly a selfish person. If he wanted to keep Eduardo, he would.
---
The meeting is at start of normal business hours like the last one, because despite the lack of contention, there were still a lot of assets to divide and a lot of paperwork to cover those divisions. They'll be signing things all day.
Eduardo waits for Mark at breakfast, handing him a still-warm Pop-Tart. He says he'll wait for Mark.
Mark shakes his head and waves him off, ignoring Eduardo's puzzled, slightly hurt look. Nervous tension makes Mark throw the Pop-Tart away as soon as the door shuts behind Eduardo, but some of the training sticks and Mark drinks a couple glasses of water in a row, skipping the Red Bull.
He got plenty of sleep. He hadn't thought he would, and he had heard Eduardo still moving around when he'd gotten home last night, but he'd passed out almost as soon as he was horizontal, as if someone had slipped him something or he hadn't slept in a week.
He's as awake as he's ever going to be, and he doesn't want to be late, so he pulls a hoodie on over one of Dustin's Mountain Dew t-shirts that Mark has long-since appropriated, thinks lightly of the horror and embarrassment his outfit will evoke on Eduardo's face when he arrives in their stiff mediator's office, and grabs his keys.
He has to come back for his wallet, but he didn't get too far away from the curb, so he doesn't consider it that large a loss.
The final papers are inches thick. It takes half the day to go through them with the lawyer reading everything out, asking for their initials on every page and their full signatures at the end of every section.
When they come back from lunch, which was a silent affair in separate rooms because it's their mediator's policy - Mark suspects there's a history of a few last-minute reconciliations and lost revenue there - there's a few more initials and a couple more signatures, and then they switch paperwork to swap signatures, the last official step. Mark watches Eduardo lean down and sign quickly and confidently. He looks up and smiles at Mark once he's finished.
Mark looks down at the last blank line.
He signs, quick and perfunctory. He sets the pen down and steps back after, appraising his signature. It's not as flawless as Eduardo's rendition of it, but it has a certain character that's more than an adequate substitute.
When he looks up, Eduardo is staring at him.
He looks gutted.
Mark shoves his hands into his pockets, glad he'd worn a hoodie today.
"Well," the mediator says, clearing his throat. Eduardo doesn't so much as twitch, still frozen. Mark looks back at him evenly.
"Well," the mediator says again, more loudly. "It can be a little odd, how simple this final step feels. However, I assure you, divorce is-"
"Shut up," Eduardo says. "Just stop talking." He moves finally, jerking upright. His expression is painful to look at, so Mark doesn't.
He looks down at the desk with the papers on it instead, and he doesn't look up until the door slams shut behind Eduardo.
Eduardo doesn't wait for him in the hallway or by the elevators or in the parking lot. His car, in fact, is already gone by the time Mark gets out there. Mark digs his keys out of his back pocket, thankful for his insistence on separate cars, and goes home to wait for Eduardo's inevitable return.
---
He was wrong about this, though: he'd have guessed Eduardo would've gone to Etienne, tried to calm down or at least soothe his ego first. Instead, he's in the living room when Mark walks in, and Mark feels like his skin doesn't quite fit but that's nothing compared to Eduardo, who looks twitchy and cold and stiffly out of place as he looks around, surveying their home as if he'd never seen it before.
"Wardo," Mark says.
"Not now, Mark," Eduardo says, in a voice that might've passed as his own if Mark hadn't known him at all.
And just like that, the thrumming tension in him, the itch to prove himself or fix things, resolves into anger, sudden and relieving and safe in its strength. "Fuck you," Mark snaps. "Don't you fucking dare brush me off."
"Fuck-" Eduardo says, sounding disbelieving as he lets go of the back of the armchair to jerk around and stare at Mark. "Fuck me?"
"You didn't want a divorce," Mark snarls. "You never did. You were just too fucking cowardly to do anything else." Eduardo settles into stillness, like he's getting well and truly angry. Mark feels viciously accomplished and says, "You're always so afraid."
"You have no idea," Eduardo says, but instead of yelling he chokes out a laugh. "Do you have any idea? What I'm afraid of?"
"No," Mark says. "Only that you'd make both of us miserable for months with a divorce neither of us want because of it."
"You're wrong," Eduardo says. "Completely. I did want the divorce."
"Really," Mark says. "You weren't trying to force me to react?"
"Yeah," Eduardo says, and Mark hates him, because he still wants to strangle Eduardo with his bare hands but Eduardo has already moved on, easy, volatile anger settling into the weary sadness Mark has never understood and never had a match for. "It was the only way I could change anything. I couldn't do this anymore."
"And rather than say something to me," Mark spits, "this. All of it, instead of opening your goddamn mouth." Jealousy and loneliness and forcing Mark into a corner with this whole thing; if it weren't him Eduardo had been trying to manipulate, Mark would've admired it.
"Mark," Eduardo says incredulously. "I spent four years married to you that we didn't have to be married. I spent the first three of them trying to get your attention! There was nothing I could've just said you would've heard!"
"Get my attention?" Mark asks, snorting. "How?"
"When I started kissing you all the time," Eduardo says. "When I'd hold your hand or sit behind you on the couch or fall asleep on your shoulder. I grabbed your ass a couple of times, Mark, and within a year every person who knows us just assumed we were married for real. I'm not sure how direct you wanted me to be!"
"None of that necessarily meant you wanted me," Mark insists. He grapples for his anger, remembers all the lawyers and everyone's concern and fucking Etienne. His stomach is twisting, though, in nervous swoops, as he remembers when the touching first started, Eduardo hesitant but persistent in his escalating attention. He'd thought - Eduardo was always touchy, Mark just thought as he got more comfortable and Facebook grew that he got more affectionate.
"We had sex," Eduardo says flatly. "We fucked three times in one night and slept on top of each other and woke up and had breakfast."
"We were drunk," Mark says. He tries to ignore the waver in his voice. He isn't sure what to do with this knowledge, how he's supposed to handle knowing that Eduardo has not just been his but his for five years and Mark never took advantage of it in any way that mattered.
"I never would've let it happen if we weren't," Eduardo says bitterly. "I never would've slept with you sober, because I wouldn't have risked our friendship or Facebook for it. When you went back to your room the next day, I took the hint."
Mark swallows hard. That must've been when Eduardo gave up. Mark doesn't blame him - he remembers that night, the drinks and the cuddling at the table until Chris sent them home in a cab with exasperation and fond looks. Eduardo had been having trouble getting the door open, and Mark had tucked himself along Eduardo's side and held his fingers over Eduardo's to guide the key into the lock. It had helped more than anything probably because Eduardo had stopped laughing as soon as Mark touched him. Eduardo's breath had hitched, and Mark had slid his hand into Eduardo's back pocket for balance, and then they'd held the keys tight in their tangled hands while Eduardo pushed Mark up against the wall and kissed him, ten fifteen twenty minutes with the front door swinging open right next to them.
If the front door hadn't been open they might not have done it. Mark thinks, given even a little bit of an obstacle, they might have stalled, because they weren't that drunk. But when Mark had yanked too hard at Eduardo's hair and started grinding against him a little too frantically, Eduardo had only groaned and shoved them sideways back through the door. And then the couch was right there, and, well.
And after they'd done it once there was no reason not to do it again. With their sweat cooling and Eduardo half falling off the couch on top of Mark, there was no reason not to keep kissing, not to go upstairs and undress Eduardo, fingers fumbling over buttons made unfamiliar from this direction, not to fall on top of him on the bed and keep kissing kissing kissing until Eduardo pushed Mark away with a gasp and grabbed condoms and opened him up, sliding into him slowly and rocking deep and gentle together until they both came.
And after that, after they'd done it twice and were falling asleep in the same bed - that, at least, was not a new occurrence, and Mark was always more than comfortable with Eduardo's heat alongside him - it made no sense not to stay in the same bed. Mark had stumbled up to go to the bathroom three hours later, bladder about to burst, and when he'd come back Eduardo had been awake again, and he pulled Mark against and into him in another slow rush that felt inevitable.
Mark had woken up several hours later, in the late, late morning, and Eduardo had been awake and looking at him, frighteningly sober. There was nothing bad about it; Eduardo was just looking at him, almost half-asleep still, and he was just - Eduardo.
But he was Eduardo who Mark had slept with, now, in Eduardo's sheets that smelled like them, and he wasn't looking at Mark like Mark had thought he would. He was looking at Mark like they were going to have to talk, like there was some secret or disappointing thing he was going to have to say. Mark had felt panicked, because he doesn't care about a lot of things but he cares about Facebook and his friends and Eduardo, and that moment had felt like he was about to lose all of them.
He doesn't remember what he'd said, just that he'd made some crack about the marriage bed and drunken one night stands. Eduardo had frozen next to him, and Mark had worried it wasn't going to be enough, that they'd ruined everything anyway. Then Eduardo had smiled, stilted, and said he was going to shower. When he was hidden in the bathroom, he'd yelled at Mark to shower too, and Mark had gone, feeling guiltily relieved.
Then they'd had breakfast together and cleaned up around the house, and Eduardo had squabbled with Mark over what music they were going to blast through the speakers. It was perfectly normal, and yeah, Mark had gone back to his own room that night.
If it had been a little awkward, if Eduardo's touches went away for a while and he didn't smile as ridiculously at Mark all the time, well, Mark had assumed that was the normal price you paid for accidentally having sex three times with your best friend.
"I didn't-" Mark says.
"You never do," Eduardo says. "You spend five years married to me and think we're both doing it for business."
"You should've told me!" Mark insists. "That's all you would've had to do!"
"Yes," Eduardo says. "Obviously I should've just waited until after work one day and said, 'Hey, Mark, we're out of pasta noodles and by the way I'm in love with you.'"
His voices stalls after he says it. He looks shocked. Mark feels dizzy. He can hear his own breath, shaky-sounding.
"Yes," he says, and his voice is hoarse. "You really should've."
"And then," Eduardo says. "And then you would've said, 'Then stop at the store, I don't like pasta anyway,' and ignored that I ever said anything about it."
"Only for a while," Mark says, because he's right. No matter when Eduardo told him, Mark wouldn't have seen it coming. He's always surprised by these things, made worse because Eduardo's the one person he expects to know well enough to avoid being surprised. Because they know each other too well.
"And after that while," Eduardo says. "What then?"
Mark takes a slow breath and steps closer. Eduardo watches him warily. "I don't know what I would've said," Mark says. "I know what I would've done."
Eduardo, for all his wariness, opens his arms to pull Mark close when Mark steps nearer. Mark kisses him and watches his eyes close, tightening his grip around Eduardo's shoulders.
"To start, I wouldn't have let you start dating that French asshole," Mark says later, when Eduardo's arms have slid down around his waist into a real hug.
Eduardo snorts and leans his forehead against Mark's. "That is not the most important part of any of this."
Mark thinks it's pretty fucking important. "You're dumping him," he says. "Now. Or I'm going to ruin his life." Mark may ruin his life either way, but Eduardo doesn't need to know that.
Eduardo, the bastard, has the gall to start laughing.
Mark hopes his expression conveys the extent of his hatred. He doubts it.
"It's okay," Eduardo says, on the end of one last undignified snort. "It's just that I can't. I already did break up with him."
Mark blinks and lets himself feel cautiously optimistic. "When?"
Eduardo looks sheepish. "Right after you met him. The day I missed lunch with you? I met up with him and broke it off."
"Why?" Mark demands.
"After what he said about Facebook?" Eduardo says. "And besides, I couldn't date someone you hated."
"He was an asshole," Mark says.
"I didn't think you'd like him," Eduardo says, wryly amused.
"You deliberately picked someone who would piss me off as much as possible?" Mark asks bitterly.
"Yes," Eduardo says. "But also no."
Mark isn't going to ask why him, then, because he doesn't care. He doesn't give a shit. Etienne can be a fucking prostitute or the prince of fucking Denmark, as long as Eduardo doesn't go near him ever again. "Whatever," he says.
"He's a lot like you," Eduardo explains. "I thought, people hate those that are most like themselves, and then I ended up liking him." Eduardo nudges his nose along Mark's. "Because he's a lot like you."
"What have you been doing if you haven't been dating him?"
Eduardo winces. Mark braces himself and warns, "If you've found someone else-"
"No!" Eduardo says. His thumbs rub circles on the fabric of Mark's shirt. "I've actually been attending class," he says. "I'm auditing one of the courses I'd take if I went back to school for an MBA like I've been considering."
"Oh," Mark says blankly. His stomach is still twisting, turning over and over, hot and relentless. He can't tell whether it's jealousy or want, and he digs his nails into Eduardo's arms in retaliation. He can't deal with the idea of school right now, and he doesn't need to. It's less important than Eduardo wanting to date someone else or work somewhere else or get a divorce, and it can wait. He sighs, and Eduardo just smiles at him, a little stupidly.
It fades after a few seconds, and Mark frowns, unable to stop himself nudging forward, trying to bring it back.
"I was afraid," Eduardo says. "You were right about that part. If we screw this up-"
"Divorce," Mark says. "We've survived both marriage and divorce court."
"When you say it like that," Eduardo says, "It sounds dumb to suggest sex is what's going to finally manage to drive us away from each other."
"Precisely," Mark says. He tugs a little at Eduardo's shoulders, angling to get their mouths together.
Eduardo pulls away. "But that doesn't change the fact that it might. Especially considering our luck."
"Our luck is fine," Mark says. "We're fine."
But contrarily, that makes Eduardo's grip shift. His arms slide down and he hunches in a way that must near uncomfortable, hiding his face below Mark's ear. It's less like he's holding and more like he's holding on. "Why did you sign?" he asks.
"I didn't," Mark says.
Eduardo's hands clench against Mark's back. "Yeah," he says. "You did."
"No," Mark says, shaking his head. He pulls back to meet Eduardo's eyes, dark and confused and still so hurt. "I got copies of the papers from my lawyer last night. Neither of us signed the right ones, not that the mediator noticed. I told you he was an idiot. The divorce won't file."
Eduardo jerks away from him. Mark catches hold of his arms, doesn't let go. "You-" Eduardo's hovering between anger and upset, held in check only by confusion.
"I needed to see what you'd do," Mark says, talking quickly. He doesn't want to argue over this. He just needed to know. "You spent months doing this to us, I needed to see what would happen if you got what you wanted."
Eduardo pulls away completely, the last of the fabric of his shirt slipping past the pads of Mark's fingers with a rough burn. "You-really?
"Don't," Mark says, sharp, but Eduardo pauses and looks at him, and he looks miserable, too. Still. "Don't."
Eduardo comes back, slowly and almost reluctantly. His arm slides over Mark's shoulders, and one of his hands touches the front of Mark's hoodie. Mark grabs whole fistfuls of Eduardo's shirt, anchoring himself so Eduardo can't pull away again.
"I'm selfish," Mark says.
"Oh?" Eduardo asks, sarcastic.
"Yes," Mark says. "I'm selfish. I always have been. I haven't wanted this divorce from the beginning and I never pretended to."
"And?" Eduardo asks. He's gone quiet again, and his thumb is rubbing small circles against Mark's side, and Mark doesn't think he'll try to step away.
"If you'd been happy," Mark says, and stops. But Eduardo just keeps looking at him, dark-eyed, and Mark forces himself to finish. "If you'd been happy, we would've signed the right papers when they came back wrong and that-fine."
"That would've been fine?" Eduardo asks, a little faint, a little disbelieving.
"Yes," Mark says, grumbling. He wouldn't have wanted to be married to Eduardo anyway, if Eduardo had honestly wanted away from him. Mark releases his shirt and slides his hands under it instead, stepping back up against Eduardo. It's natural to talk to the hollow of Eduardo's throat like this; it'd be uncomfortable to crane his head back and meet his eyes. "I would've signed it if you wanted me to," he says. "If you had wanted out."
Eduardo stops breathing. Mark can hear the hitch when it happens, and feel it too, when all of Eduardo stops moving.
Then he sighs out, "Mark," almost like he's angry.
"What?" Mark asks defensively, and he fights a little when Eduardo tries to pull his head up, but they kiss instead of talk and Mark will deal with uncomfortable angles for that.
But they kiss longer and longer, and it's easier eventually to step back just a little, tilting his head and leaving his mouth slightly open and holding carefully in place when Eduardo slides one of his hands up under his hoodie and t-shirt to press, cool, against his back.
"You didn't have to prove that," Eduardo says after too long. Mark had almost thought they were done talking. "I know you care about me."
Mark makes a derisive noise, but it gets swallowed in the next kiss and sounded more like a moan, anyway. "I thought this whole thing was because you thought I didn't care about you."
"No," Eduardo says. "This whole thing is because I thought you weren't in love with me. I've always known you care about me."
"Always?" Mark asks sardonically.
"You're very bad at hiding things," Eduardo says. "You care about me and making me happy. But you didn't know you were in love with me, so it was really difficult to figure out."
"I think those are the same thing," Mark says, sliding his fingers under the loose knot of Eduardo's tie and pulling it down and down and off. "Caring and loving. One entails the other."
"For most people?" Eduardo says. "Probably. But I don't think they necessarily correlate for you."
"You know," Mark says, and takes a stumbling step backwards to pull them towards the couch. "All you've actually said to me so far has been insults and yelling."
"We're married, remember?" Eduardo says. "Everyone says that's all a relationship is after a while."
"I've never heard that," Mark protests, and pulls a little more firmly at Eduardo's shoulders.
"No," Eduardo says, pulling away and frowning at Mark. "We're not having sex on the couch again."
"Ever?" Mark asks curiously. He follows Eduardo to the stairs, and it's stupid to hold hands but Eduardo does it anyway. Mark twitches his fingers against Eduardo's palm.
"Well," Eduardo says. "Not for the first time again."
Mark hums and pulls his hand out of Eduardo's so he can pull his hoodie off as they go up the stairs.
"That's not going to be a pattern," Eduardo continues, content without Mark's input.
"Whatever," Mark says, and pushes Eduardo through his own bedroom door when he stalls in front of the two doorways. If either room is going to become the master bedroom, it's going to be Eduardo's. "Everyone probably already thought we were having sex all over the house."
"Fine," Eduardo says, wavering. "But no sex in the study. I work in there."
---
"And we're getting remarried," Eduardo says, much later. He's moved past sleepy and into the obnoxiously awake phase he apparently hits after Mark sucks his brain out through his dick.
"We can't, we never divorced," Mark reminds him absently. He does not have an obnoxiously awake phase, and he's occupied more right now with shoving all of Eduardo's limbs back to the proper side of the bed. Every time he manages to move him, Eduardo inches back over. Mark isn't sure this marriage thing is going to work after all.
"Don't be an ass, you'll survive a little bit of cuddling," Eduardo says, and holds on relentlessly. "But I'm serious about the marriage. We are having a proper ceremony and a real reception and you're going to attend both."
"Bite me," Mark says, but even he can tell it lacks conviction.
Eduardo smiles and, probably as a reward, allows Mark to wiggle him a little to the left. Having successfully reclaimed half of one of the pillows, Mark drops his head onto it and pretends he can't hear Eduardo furiously texting everyone they know.
Epilogue
Prologue | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Epilogue
The divorce has been coming along horrifyingly fast. It's a surprisingly quick process, even for people with their assets, when everyone has really good lawyers and nothing's being contested. They've never been in the same room when dealing with it: Eduardo has his lawyers, and Mark has his own, and their mediator mediates between the two teams. Their presences are barely required.
Mark is understandably surprised when he gets a call from one of the associate lawyers informing him his presence is requested at a meeting sometime in the upcoming week, and would he and Mr. Saverin coordinate their schedules to be available the same days and let the firm know?
Mark asks Eduardo why, and Eduardo shrugs and tells him they can both be free on Thursday. Mark's too busy wondering what the lawyers want to ask what'll happen to Eduardo's lunch date.
They drive in together, because Eduardo's the only one of the two of them that actually knows where the mediator's office is. Their lawyers offered to pick them up, but Mark hadn't bothered to reply and Eduardo had politely declined. They're five minutes early to the meeting, but their legal teams are already there, and they're forcibly separated as soon as they walk in.
Eduardo is pulled to the other side of the enormous conference room's table, and when Mark looks at him across the gleaming expanse, Eduardo looks just as bemused as Mark feels. They've never faced each other across one of these before. Mark wants to smile, and his lawyers, when he finally lets them have his attention, look concerned.
"Alright, let me start things off," says the mediator, who Eduardo had informed Mark was called some very severe name Mark had promptly forgotten just like the first dozen times he'd heard it. "You both know why we're here?"
"We're getting divorced," Mark says helpfully.
Eduardo gives him a look from the other side of the table. Mark raises his eyebrows back. This guy is probably an idiot, and Mark wouldn't put it past him to legitimately forget what everyone is there for. Even if he hadn't - since he likely hadn't - a little bit of sarcasm never killed anyone.
"We're still having trouble finishing the division of assets," Eduardo's lawyer says, looking somewhere around Mark's forehead. She probably had a class in law school that told her that was a good, convincing substitute for real eye contact. It isn't. "We've been discussing it for a good week now, but there's no way to make this one point overlap."
"Neither of your legal teams has been given enough leeway to negotiate," the mediator says helpfully. "So we're going to go over this point today and hopefully come to a resolution. If you're both amenable, while you're here we can also get confirmations on the rest of the assets, so we can discuss any conflicts that might crop up there."
Mark yawns. Eduardo, the hypocrite, covers his own mouth while glaring at Mark.
"What's the conflict?" Eduardo asks.
The legal teams get going. They talk, not quite over each other, but each as if they're fighting to clarify an important point. Since they haven't even answered the question yet, Mark doesn't think the clarifications are really that important, but stopping them to say so would probably set them back another twenty minutes. Instead, he bites his tongue and wishes Eduardo had let him bring something to write on.
Almost half an hour later, Mark figures out that the problem asset is the division of their Facebook shares.
He frowns, listening more closely, and it takes almost an hour and several questions from Eduardo - who, Mark is glad, at least looks no less lost than Mark feels - but finally they explain the problem.
Basically, there are two parts to it: the first and primary one, for the purposes of the divorce, is how many shares Eduardo's team wants to get won't reconcile with how many shares Mark's team wants to give. Secondly, and much more complicatedly, is the fact that they don't agree what shares, exactly, they're dividing, because it's never been made clear.
"He started with thirty, I started with seventy, it's been divided and changed from there," Mark says. "What's the problem?" They've got contracts, dozens and dozens of them, saying exactly what percentages they each have now.
"Yeah, but I know what they mean," Eduardo says. He's frowning. "The contracts about Facebook have always specified us individually - what you have as CEO, what I have as CFO. But legally, being married with no pre-nip, we're one person. There's confusion about whether to treat those as joint assets like everything else or whether the business contracts supersede."
"So?" Mark says. "One of those routes must be legally correct. We can't be the only couple that've had this problem."
"No," Mark's lawyer says. "And normally, we'd each argue to get the best deal for our client, and that would be that. However, your instructions for the shares don't match your spouse's instructions for them."
"What does that mean?" Eduardo asks.
"Your request," Eduardo's lawyers says, "would only be possible if we viewed the shares as pooled assets, which then would be divided unevenly. Mr. Zuckerberg specified you retain the percentage you own as an individual. We can't meet both requests, and we can't argue the numbers until we agree how to view the shares."
"Pool them," Mark says. "Divide them unevenly. It doesn't matter."
"I don't understand how it matters either way," Eduardo says. "I only want five percent."
"Five percent above the twenty you already had or five percent plus half of the pooled ones?" Mark asks, confused.
"That's the problem we've been struggling with," Mark's lawyer says.
"No," Eduardo says. "Five percent, period."
Everyone in the room goes quiet. Even the mediator seems to be gaping a little.
"What?" Mark strangles out.
Eduardo smiles, a little lopsided but sincere. "I'm still getting half our bank account and keeping my position as CFO, with various oversights built in that are supposed to protect me if you decided to fire me next week. I don't need twenty five percent of Facebook, too."
"But you own it," Mark says. More importantly, Eduardo's earned it. He frowns. "Don't you want it?"
Eduardo opens his mouth and then shrugs. "It's not a question of want," he says, but his voice goes up like a question on the end, and Mark isn't going to understand this. How do you not want your share of something you made?
"Look," the mediator says. "This should be a fairly simple problem to resolve, when we get down to it. Mr. Zuckerberg wants to give Mr. Saverin half the total shares, and Mr. Saverin has only requested five percent. Splitting the difference, when both sides are willing to give up so much, shouldn't be difficult."
"I don't need more than five percent," Eduardo says.
"Why?" Mark says. "Why that number?"
Eduardo shrugs again. "It's what the other founders have, right? Like Dustin."
"Even Dustin has more than five percent," Mark says. "And Sean."
Eduardo at least twitches at the mention of Sean. He only says, "Still. It's just because it hasn't been diluted. I would want a static five percent. I might end up with more than Sean or Dustin by the time the company goes public."
"But you're not Sean or Dustin," Mark says. "You own-"
"Don't you want the majority shares in Facebook?" Eduardo interrupts.
"I already have them," Mark says, because technically, for all intents and purposes, he does.
"Yes, but this would be extra security," Eduardo says. "It'd be good for you."
"And what about you?" Mark insists, and they go like that until lunch.
Mark just doesn't understand, and he's never going to. Eduardo is never going to convince him that taking only five percent, dropping almost fifteen percent, just giving them away, isn't like throwing them away.
"I'm throwing them to you," Eduardo points out. "And it'd make no sense at all to go with your plan for giving me exactly half. If I have to deserve more than five percent, then explain to me how I deserve half the total?"
"Legally-" Mark starts, and then his lawyer interrupts with, "That's what we're here to determine, it's still a grey area," which is just him trying to protect Mark from saying something stupid, probably, but Mark still wants to kick him.
"And that's lunch!" the mediator interrupts cheerfully, and the room half empties before the last syllable leaves his mouth.
"Come on," Eduardo says. "Let's get out of here."
"Why?" Mark repeats on their way down, for what feels like the hundredth time.
"Nope," Eduardo says lightly. "We're on lunch break, no talking about legal things."
They get sandwiches at a little deli around the street, then bring them back, park again, and sit on the benches in front of the law office. It's hot outside, hot enough to prompt Eduardo to take his suit jacket off. Mark pulls the sweater Eduardo had insisted he wear off, too.
"It was less work to get married," Mark says, complaining, and Eduardo snorts in agreement and steals half of Mark's sandwich because he doesn't like his own. It's technically breaking the rule about legal talk, but that must only apply to specifics, because Eduardo answers him.
"That's one of the things a lot of people complain about today," he says. "Too easy to get married, too difficult to get divorced." He takes a bite and chews. "Or too expensive," he adds thoughtfully, through a mouthful of food.
"Not if you don't have anything for them to take half of," Mark says.
"No," Eduardo says. "There's state and lawyer fees, too. Ours is costing tens of thousands of dollars, you know. Even average people, I think it can cost a couple thousand, especially if there are kids."
Mark shakes his head, and they talk about Facebook the rest of lunch.
When they get back in they go in circles a little longer, until Mark finally snaps, "If you don't want a part of Facebook, just say so. I'll buy all the shares from you, we can do it fairly."
Something complicated and almost frightening happens on Eduardo's face, and he looks at Mark for a long time, and then he nods once, sharply, and agrees to take his original twenty percent. It shouldn't feel like such a victory, getting him to merely keep his original share, but it does. It pales in comparison to how giving him half would've felt, knowing there was that extra incentive or insurance to keep him where he is, but the one thing this divorce has taught him is when to take what he can get.
The lawyers spend the remainder of the afternoon describing the rest of the asset division and waiting for objections that never come. The only point of interest is hearing that Eduardo's given the house to Mark, and Mark thinks about the house Eduardo just bought and wonders what the lawyers would say about the addition of new assets. It's only vaguely interesting to contemplate.
At the end of the day, they're released from the office with a promise that the paperwork should be finished in a few weeks and they'll be kept updated.
---
And suddenly it is done.
Mark is going to be out of the office all day tomorrow while they finalize the divorce. He doesn't like leaving Facebook unattended, and yes, while that's what the thousands of employees are for, he doesn't have to be happy about it.
"Mark, if you come in one more time under the pretense of worrying about Facebook for one day when you will still be in the same city, I am calling Chris and telling him you're having a nervous breakdown about signing the papers tomorrow," Dustin finally snaps, and his eyes are wild enough that Mark believes him.
"You've gone in and yelled at him eleven times since ten a.m. this morning," Dustin's assistant informs Mark helpfully as he obeys Dustin's instructions - or cowers under his threat, but anyone who says that to Mark's face will have worse to deal with than a worried Chris - but even she kind of ducks and looks away when Mark glares at her.
Mark has to talk to Dustin twice more that day, however. He actually has to, and he keeps the visits as short and impersonal as possible. He thinks he's succeeded, because Chris remains safely elsewhere-that-isn't-Mark's-office, but he tries to work late, just a little, just until seven, and at seven fifteen Sean shows up and drags him out of the building.
"Dustin called me," Sean says. "I'm your intervention."
They go to a bar eight blocks down, this kind of dumpy little place that's quieter than Mark expected. Sean seems familiar with it, moving about with ease and comfort, and he pushes Mark at a small metal table with matching hideous chairs before going to order their drinks for them.
He sets them on the table, says, "Gin and tonic, drink up, you're gonna talk this shit out to me or they're sending you to a shrink."
"For a divorce it'd be a therapist, not a shrink," Mark says.
"They're sick enough of you right now they'd probably find a way to make it a shrink. I'd be surprised if drugs didn't get involved."
"I haven't even been around Chris recently," Mark mutters.
"No, because Dustin told me - before he took off at four thirty this afternoon, he says the extra half hour is asshole tax - you haven't been around Chris since he made you really uncomfortable and you started avoiding him," Sean says unsympathetically. "Now drink and start talking."
"I don't like gin and tonics," Mark says, but he picks it up anyway.
Sean mirrors him, taking a few large gulps before setting the glass back down. "Well?" he says.
"Fuck off," Mark says. "I don't have to tell you anything."
"Depends how much you value your friends," Sean says, casual like he isn't throwing stones from a fragile vantage point.
Mark grabs his drink, leans back in his chair, and decides not to speak a word.
Two hours later, Sean is on his third drink, Mark is on his fourth, and Mark has said a great many things he never meant to say out loud. He's grateful already that Dustin sent Sean and didn't try to come himself. There are things Mark can get away with around Sean that he can't around Dustin, because Sean isn't and doesn't pretend to be friends with Eduardo.
"Now, really," Sean says, in a sort of slow drawl that's his biggest tell. This is what he actually came to talk about. "I didn't want to get involved, but now I'm completely out of the gossip loop because I thought I didn't want to know. What happened between you and lover boy?"
"Nothing," Mark says dully.
"A divorce, come on, that's a big deal. One of you must've stepped out of line big time. You know I heard he's cheating?"
Mark doesn't know if it's the casual mockery of whatever mistakes might've ruined their fake-marriage or if it's the denigration of Eduardo, but he can't keep his mouth shut. "Sean!" he snaps. "Nothing happened."
"If you say so," Sean says blandly, looking over Mark's shoulder as if immensely bored.
Mark hates when he does that. He slumps further into the booth and fumes.
"Dude," Sean says. "Mark."
"What?" Mark snaps.
Sean sounds uncharacteristically cautious as he says, "You know you're-I mean, you know I hate to do this counseling shit, but when you're clearly not happy-"
"Why does everyone want to make me talk about this?" Mark asks. "Of course I'm not happy."
Sean looks at him.
After a few seconds, Mark starts to feel uncomfortable. He shifts. "What?"
"You don't want any of this," Sean says.
"No," Mark says. "Of course not." He barely restrains himself from saying duh or something equally juvenile.
"So why are you getting a divorce?" Sean all but yells, and Mark snarls back, "Because he wants one!"
Sean glares. "You're going to do it just because Eduardo wants to. You've never done that before, and now's the time you decide to start indulging him."
"He deserves it," Mark says. He grits his teeth.
"You haven't even told him you don't want to get divorced," Sean says. "I bet anything. Fucking pussy."
"I did," Mark says. "Didn't work."
"Why not?" Sean demands, and Mark doesn't know what to say.
"Because," Mark says. He shrugs. "Because he married me to get a green card. He has it."
"He's had it for a while," Sean says. "Why stay married before?"
"Because there wasn't a reason to get divorced before," Mark says. "Now there is."
"Tell him you don't want to," Sean says.
"No," Mark says. Eduardo would listen, because he cares about Mark. They'd still get divorced eventually, but it might take long enough to ruin Eduardo's new relationship, or it might not be enough of a delay in the inevitable to be worth the hassle. Either way, Eduardo's earned this one consideration from Mark.
"You can't sign those papers," Sean says. "Dude, I'm serious, you really can't-"
But Mark means it when he says, "I'm going to."
"Mark," Sean snaps, suddenly serious.
"It's not real," Mark says. "It never was. There isn't anything there to be real. Everyone thinks we were together, but we never have been."
He expects Sean to keep protesting, to crack rude jokes, to insult Eduardo's ability to put out and start talking about consummation.
He doesn't expect Sean to roll his eyes and say, "I'm not an idiot, Mark, I know you two have never gone past the awkward best friend thing, but that doesn't mean there's nothing there."
"You know?" Mark asks blankly. He's gotten so accustomed to hearing the opposite that he's nearly more ready to believe Sean is lying now, to be perverse, than he is to believe Sean actually knew.
"Yeah," Sean says, looking at him as if he were an idiot. He was always one of the few people that could do that and make Mark believe it. He still is, and the realization makes Mark uncomfortable. He fights the urge to look away. "I know. Apparently I was the only one, because the rest of your friends are fuckwits, but I know."
Mark blinks. "How?"
"I know you," Sean says, shrugging.
"So do Chris and Dustin," Mark says.
"No," Sean says. "Not as well as I do." He stops, shaking his head. "Or, all banality aside, maybe they know you too well."
Mark frowns. He doesn't understand.
Sean watches him appraisingly for a minute and then nods, apparently satisfied. "Now are you going to shut up and listen to me?" he asks. "I might be able to help you."
"I don't need help," Mark says.
"Bullshit," Sean says.
"There's nothing that can be helped," Mark amends.
"If you say so," Sean says. "Now seriously, shut up for two minutes."
Mark grabs what remains of his fourth drink and drains it.
Sean sighs again, slumping back in his chair, and the tired expression on his face, rarely seen, pulls wrinkles up in the corners of his eyes and mouth. Mark always forgets how much older Sean is, not least because Sean being nearly thirty is incomprehensible. Thirty would be - an adult, a milestone beyond twenty-some years. Thirty is almost half the average lifespan. And Sean rarely looks it or even tries to, but right now he is an adult.
Mark is now the age Sean was when he found Mark. Eduardo is even older. Mark doesn't know where the years went, doesn't know how five years could've passed and nothing could've changed but Facebook.
He realizes, suddenly, why Eduardo is doing this. He isn't that invested in Etienne - Mark was right about that. But he's more aware than Mark, always has been, and the half-decade of static motion must've chafed. Mark doesn't like when things change unless he's the one changing them, but he and Eduardo haven't changed at all.
"You remember when we met?" Sean says. "You were so easy to impress."
Mark shrugs. He was, but Sean was also more impressive then. He tried harder. Now, he doesn't. Maybe he doesn't feel like he needs to. Maybe he can't. Mark had attributed Sean's differences to his own growth, his own realization of Sean's stupidity and unique genius and the balance between those two accounts. He'd never considered that maybe Sean had done some changing too.
"It made you easy to persuade. Except I couldn't get you to do one thing. I wanted to keep you away from Eduardo," Sean says. "I would've if I could have gotten away with it."
"You thought he was bad for Facebook," Mark says. This is old news. Sean had thought so. Mark had even, occasionally, agreed.
"No," Sean says. "Yes, but no. I thought he was bad for you. And for Facebook through you."
Mark blinks. "Eduardo has never done anything to me."
"He helps you," Sean says. "He makes you calm down and step back and think. He makes things easier. He makes you stupid and normal and he makes you happy."
The only thing Mark can think is that he needs to deny it. He can't, not quite, because Eduardo does do all of those things, but the way Sean's talking, he doesn't sound like he's saying Eduardo does those things; he sounds like he's saying Eduardo is the only cause of those things, and that's not true. Plenty of things make Mark happy.
Mark says so.
Sean waves a hand. His drink, sweating on the table in front of him, is untouched. "He makes you happy," he says. "You made Facebook because you were angry and powerless and wanted to do something big. Eduardo could've ruined all of that, because, for you, he makes all of that go away."
"He helped build Facebook," Mark says. He frowns when Sean makes an exasperated noise.
"Yes, he did, but he didn't have to," Sean says. He leans forward again abruptly, looking intent, and this would be more familiar but there's no smile or sneer or secret hidden in his face, just a blank honesty Mark doesn't know how to interpret. "Look, you're not getting it. If you could have only Facebook or only Eduardo, which would you choose?"
Mark has to think, letting the idea push at the corners of his mind, teasing with possibility and disappointing in its inflexibility. He watches the beads of condensation slowly slide down the side of Sean's glass. His palms are wet from his own glass. He doesn't have an answer.
"Do you know?" Sean prompts.
Finally, reluctantly, Mark shakes his head.
Sean looks disappointed. "Well," he says. "Never mind."
"What?" Mark presses. He needs to know what Sean has to say. Sean always-
-Mark has to know.
"Back then," Sean says. "I've always thought that if you'd gotten Eduardo back then, he'd take away everything that made you great."
"Yes, you think he would've made me happy," Mark says, because he understands this. "You think I wouldn't have needed Facebook."
"I know you wouldn't have needed Facebook," Sean says. "Sure, you still probably would've built it, because you're you, but you wouldn't have needed it."
"I don't know if I would've chosen Eduardo or Facebook back then, either," Mark says quietly, but he almost doesn't want to admit it, not even to Sean.
"Like I said," Sean says, raising his eyebrows. "You are you."
Mark mimics Sean's earlier posture, slumping completely back in his uncomfortable chair. It feels good to sprawl once in a while. "Okay," he says.
"No," Sean says.
Mark needs to go home, to their quiet and familiar almost-cluttered house, to Eduardo on the couch waiting for him with too many blankets. Mark refuses to imagine the possibility where Eduardo and his blankets aren't there. "What?" he asks, dragging his eyes back to Sean.
"I'm glad to see you get with the program," Sean says. "But there's one more thing you need to think about."
"No," Mark says. "I can't. I need to-"
But Sean is nothing if not a relentless bastard. "What about Eduardo?" he asks.
"What about-that's what I-" Mark says, struggling to push his chair back. He jostles the table, and the glasses on it rattle.
"No, I mean what do you think Eduardo would choose?" Sean asks. "Would or would've, now or then. You or Facebook?"
But it's not really a question. Sean knows the answer, everyone they know knows the answer. Eduardo never would have chosen Facebook. It wouldn't even have required consideration. And that hasn't changed in the intervening years.
Five years ago, Mark's own indecision would've made him furious with Eduardo, and Eduard's apathy toward Facebook as anything but a business to run or an extension of Mark would've been unbearable.
Mark is old enough now to acknowledge that, five years ago, he really was an asshole.
Sean nods slowly. "Now it's okay," he says. He reaches out and picks up his drink. The ice is completely melted. "Look," he adds, after barely a sip. "I don't understand Eduardo and I have no intention of trying to, because he's your problem."
Mark nods.
"So I don't know what the fuck he thinks he's doing," Sean says. "But you can't sign those papers tomorrow."
"I have to," Mark says. From the way Sean's face falls, he was obviously expecting the answer would change.
It's Sean's specialty, making the hard or impossible sound easy. Eduardo would choose Mark over anything. Mark can't say the same, but an even tie is the best he has to offer and Eduardo does have that.
"Nobody wants you to sign them tomorrow," Sean says. "You don't want to. Chris and Dustin don't. I don't. Not even Eduardo wants you to."
"I have to," Mark repeats, because he knows he's right.
Sean closes his eyes for a long minute. Mark watches him blink and wonders how difficult it is for him to say all this and why he's bothering. "Why?"
"Because nobody thinks I will," Mark says.
Sean's brow furrows.
"Everyone expects me to refuse," Mark explains. "I could, and I could make it so difficult for Eduardo to divorce me he'd eventually give up. I could keep him, and he'd forgive me for it."
"Yeah?" Sean asks slowly.
"Everyone expects me to do that," Mark says. "Maybe even Eduardo." Probably, definitely, always Eduardo.
"So you're not going to," Sean says. "I'm still not following."
"I'm going to sign because nobody thinks I will," Mark says, giving up. He stands, snagging Sean's drink as he goes. "I enjoy being contrary."
"Mark-" Sean says, half-rising.
Mark steps away, raising Sean's glass to his mouth. The water is still perfectly cool and completely free of alcohol. Sean blinks at Mark's lack of surprise.
"I'll see you," he says, and walks alone out of the club.
Nobody expects Mark will, because Mark is inherently and shamelessly a selfish person. If he wanted to keep Eduardo, he would.
---
The meeting is at start of normal business hours like the last one, because despite the lack of contention, there were still a lot of assets to divide and a lot of paperwork to cover those divisions. They'll be signing things all day.
Eduardo waits for Mark at breakfast, handing him a still-warm Pop-Tart. He says he'll wait for Mark.
Mark shakes his head and waves him off, ignoring Eduardo's puzzled, slightly hurt look. Nervous tension makes Mark throw the Pop-Tart away as soon as the door shuts behind Eduardo, but some of the training sticks and Mark drinks a couple glasses of water in a row, skipping the Red Bull.
He got plenty of sleep. He hadn't thought he would, and he had heard Eduardo still moving around when he'd gotten home last night, but he'd passed out almost as soon as he was horizontal, as if someone had slipped him something or he hadn't slept in a week.
He's as awake as he's ever going to be, and he doesn't want to be late, so he pulls a hoodie on over one of Dustin's Mountain Dew t-shirts that Mark has long-since appropriated, thinks lightly of the horror and embarrassment his outfit will evoke on Eduardo's face when he arrives in their stiff mediator's office, and grabs his keys.
He has to come back for his wallet, but he didn't get too far away from the curb, so he doesn't consider it that large a loss.
The final papers are inches thick. It takes half the day to go through them with the lawyer reading everything out, asking for their initials on every page and their full signatures at the end of every section.
When they come back from lunch, which was a silent affair in separate rooms because it's their mediator's policy - Mark suspects there's a history of a few last-minute reconciliations and lost revenue there - there's a few more initials and a couple more signatures, and then they switch paperwork to swap signatures, the last official step. Mark watches Eduardo lean down and sign quickly and confidently. He looks up and smiles at Mark once he's finished.
Mark looks down at the last blank line.
He signs, quick and perfunctory. He sets the pen down and steps back after, appraising his signature. It's not as flawless as Eduardo's rendition of it, but it has a certain character that's more than an adequate substitute.
When he looks up, Eduardo is staring at him.
He looks gutted.
Mark shoves his hands into his pockets, glad he'd worn a hoodie today.
"Well," the mediator says, clearing his throat. Eduardo doesn't so much as twitch, still frozen. Mark looks back at him evenly.
"Well," the mediator says again, more loudly. "It can be a little odd, how simple this final step feels. However, I assure you, divorce is-"
"Shut up," Eduardo says. "Just stop talking." He moves finally, jerking upright. His expression is painful to look at, so Mark doesn't.
He looks down at the desk with the papers on it instead, and he doesn't look up until the door slams shut behind Eduardo.
Eduardo doesn't wait for him in the hallway or by the elevators or in the parking lot. His car, in fact, is already gone by the time Mark gets out there. Mark digs his keys out of his back pocket, thankful for his insistence on separate cars, and goes home to wait for Eduardo's inevitable return.
---
He was wrong about this, though: he'd have guessed Eduardo would've gone to Etienne, tried to calm down or at least soothe his ego first. Instead, he's in the living room when Mark walks in, and Mark feels like his skin doesn't quite fit but that's nothing compared to Eduardo, who looks twitchy and cold and stiffly out of place as he looks around, surveying their home as if he'd never seen it before.
"Wardo," Mark says.
"Not now, Mark," Eduardo says, in a voice that might've passed as his own if Mark hadn't known him at all.
And just like that, the thrumming tension in him, the itch to prove himself or fix things, resolves into anger, sudden and relieving and safe in its strength. "Fuck you," Mark snaps. "Don't you fucking dare brush me off."
"Fuck-" Eduardo says, sounding disbelieving as he lets go of the back of the armchair to jerk around and stare at Mark. "Fuck me?"
"You didn't want a divorce," Mark snarls. "You never did. You were just too fucking cowardly to do anything else." Eduardo settles into stillness, like he's getting well and truly angry. Mark feels viciously accomplished and says, "You're always so afraid."
"You have no idea," Eduardo says, but instead of yelling he chokes out a laugh. "Do you have any idea? What I'm afraid of?"
"No," Mark says. "Only that you'd make both of us miserable for months with a divorce neither of us want because of it."
"You're wrong," Eduardo says. "Completely. I did want the divorce."
"Really," Mark says. "You weren't trying to force me to react?"
"Yeah," Eduardo says, and Mark hates him, because he still wants to strangle Eduardo with his bare hands but Eduardo has already moved on, easy, volatile anger settling into the weary sadness Mark has never understood and never had a match for. "It was the only way I could change anything. I couldn't do this anymore."
"And rather than say something to me," Mark spits, "this. All of it, instead of opening your goddamn mouth." Jealousy and loneliness and forcing Mark into a corner with this whole thing; if it weren't him Eduardo had been trying to manipulate, Mark would've admired it.
"Mark," Eduardo says incredulously. "I spent four years married to you that we didn't have to be married. I spent the first three of them trying to get your attention! There was nothing I could've just said you would've heard!"
"Get my attention?" Mark asks, snorting. "How?"
"When I started kissing you all the time," Eduardo says. "When I'd hold your hand or sit behind you on the couch or fall asleep on your shoulder. I grabbed your ass a couple of times, Mark, and within a year every person who knows us just assumed we were married for real. I'm not sure how direct you wanted me to be!"
"None of that necessarily meant you wanted me," Mark insists. He grapples for his anger, remembers all the lawyers and everyone's concern and fucking Etienne. His stomach is twisting, though, in nervous swoops, as he remembers when the touching first started, Eduardo hesitant but persistent in his escalating attention. He'd thought - Eduardo was always touchy, Mark just thought as he got more comfortable and Facebook grew that he got more affectionate.
"We had sex," Eduardo says flatly. "We fucked three times in one night and slept on top of each other and woke up and had breakfast."
"We were drunk," Mark says. He tries to ignore the waver in his voice. He isn't sure what to do with this knowledge, how he's supposed to handle knowing that Eduardo has not just been his but his for five years and Mark never took advantage of it in any way that mattered.
"I never would've let it happen if we weren't," Eduardo says bitterly. "I never would've slept with you sober, because I wouldn't have risked our friendship or Facebook for it. When you went back to your room the next day, I took the hint."
Mark swallows hard. That must've been when Eduardo gave up. Mark doesn't blame him - he remembers that night, the drinks and the cuddling at the table until Chris sent them home in a cab with exasperation and fond looks. Eduardo had been having trouble getting the door open, and Mark had tucked himself along Eduardo's side and held his fingers over Eduardo's to guide the key into the lock. It had helped more than anything probably because Eduardo had stopped laughing as soon as Mark touched him. Eduardo's breath had hitched, and Mark had slid his hand into Eduardo's back pocket for balance, and then they'd held the keys tight in their tangled hands while Eduardo pushed Mark up against the wall and kissed him, ten fifteen twenty minutes with the front door swinging open right next to them.
If the front door hadn't been open they might not have done it. Mark thinks, given even a little bit of an obstacle, they might have stalled, because they weren't that drunk. But when Mark had yanked too hard at Eduardo's hair and started grinding against him a little too frantically, Eduardo had only groaned and shoved them sideways back through the door. And then the couch was right there, and, well.
And after they'd done it once there was no reason not to do it again. With their sweat cooling and Eduardo half falling off the couch on top of Mark, there was no reason not to keep kissing, not to go upstairs and undress Eduardo, fingers fumbling over buttons made unfamiliar from this direction, not to fall on top of him on the bed and keep kissing kissing kissing until Eduardo pushed Mark away with a gasp and grabbed condoms and opened him up, sliding into him slowly and rocking deep and gentle together until they both came.
And after that, after they'd done it twice and were falling asleep in the same bed - that, at least, was not a new occurrence, and Mark was always more than comfortable with Eduardo's heat alongside him - it made no sense not to stay in the same bed. Mark had stumbled up to go to the bathroom three hours later, bladder about to burst, and when he'd come back Eduardo had been awake again, and he pulled Mark against and into him in another slow rush that felt inevitable.
Mark had woken up several hours later, in the late, late morning, and Eduardo had been awake and looking at him, frighteningly sober. There was nothing bad about it; Eduardo was just looking at him, almost half-asleep still, and he was just - Eduardo.
But he was Eduardo who Mark had slept with, now, in Eduardo's sheets that smelled like them, and he wasn't looking at Mark like Mark had thought he would. He was looking at Mark like they were going to have to talk, like there was some secret or disappointing thing he was going to have to say. Mark had felt panicked, because he doesn't care about a lot of things but he cares about Facebook and his friends and Eduardo, and that moment had felt like he was about to lose all of them.
He doesn't remember what he'd said, just that he'd made some crack about the marriage bed and drunken one night stands. Eduardo had frozen next to him, and Mark had worried it wasn't going to be enough, that they'd ruined everything anyway. Then Eduardo had smiled, stilted, and said he was going to shower. When he was hidden in the bathroom, he'd yelled at Mark to shower too, and Mark had gone, feeling guiltily relieved.
Then they'd had breakfast together and cleaned up around the house, and Eduardo had squabbled with Mark over what music they were going to blast through the speakers. It was perfectly normal, and yeah, Mark had gone back to his own room that night.
If it had been a little awkward, if Eduardo's touches went away for a while and he didn't smile as ridiculously at Mark all the time, well, Mark had assumed that was the normal price you paid for accidentally having sex three times with your best friend.
"I didn't-" Mark says.
"You never do," Eduardo says. "You spend five years married to me and think we're both doing it for business."
"You should've told me!" Mark insists. "That's all you would've had to do!"
"Yes," Eduardo says. "Obviously I should've just waited until after work one day and said, 'Hey, Mark, we're out of pasta noodles and by the way I'm in love with you.'"
His voices stalls after he says it. He looks shocked. Mark feels dizzy. He can hear his own breath, shaky-sounding.
"Yes," he says, and his voice is hoarse. "You really should've."
"And then," Eduardo says. "And then you would've said, 'Then stop at the store, I don't like pasta anyway,' and ignored that I ever said anything about it."
"Only for a while," Mark says, because he's right. No matter when Eduardo told him, Mark wouldn't have seen it coming. He's always surprised by these things, made worse because Eduardo's the one person he expects to know well enough to avoid being surprised. Because they know each other too well.
"And after that while," Eduardo says. "What then?"
Mark takes a slow breath and steps closer. Eduardo watches him warily. "I don't know what I would've said," Mark says. "I know what I would've done."
Eduardo, for all his wariness, opens his arms to pull Mark close when Mark steps nearer. Mark kisses him and watches his eyes close, tightening his grip around Eduardo's shoulders.
"To start, I wouldn't have let you start dating that French asshole," Mark says later, when Eduardo's arms have slid down around his waist into a real hug.
Eduardo snorts and leans his forehead against Mark's. "That is not the most important part of any of this."
Mark thinks it's pretty fucking important. "You're dumping him," he says. "Now. Or I'm going to ruin his life." Mark may ruin his life either way, but Eduardo doesn't need to know that.
Eduardo, the bastard, has the gall to start laughing.
Mark hopes his expression conveys the extent of his hatred. He doubts it.
"It's okay," Eduardo says, on the end of one last undignified snort. "It's just that I can't. I already did break up with him."
Mark blinks and lets himself feel cautiously optimistic. "When?"
Eduardo looks sheepish. "Right after you met him. The day I missed lunch with you? I met up with him and broke it off."
"Why?" Mark demands.
"After what he said about Facebook?" Eduardo says. "And besides, I couldn't date someone you hated."
"He was an asshole," Mark says.
"I didn't think you'd like him," Eduardo says, wryly amused.
"You deliberately picked someone who would piss me off as much as possible?" Mark asks bitterly.
"Yes," Eduardo says. "But also no."
Mark isn't going to ask why him, then, because he doesn't care. He doesn't give a shit. Etienne can be a fucking prostitute or the prince of fucking Denmark, as long as Eduardo doesn't go near him ever again. "Whatever," he says.
"He's a lot like you," Eduardo explains. "I thought, people hate those that are most like themselves, and then I ended up liking him." Eduardo nudges his nose along Mark's. "Because he's a lot like you."
"What have you been doing if you haven't been dating him?"
Eduardo winces. Mark braces himself and warns, "If you've found someone else-"
"No!" Eduardo says. His thumbs rub circles on the fabric of Mark's shirt. "I've actually been attending class," he says. "I'm auditing one of the courses I'd take if I went back to school for an MBA like I've been considering."
"Oh," Mark says blankly. His stomach is still twisting, turning over and over, hot and relentless. He can't tell whether it's jealousy or want, and he digs his nails into Eduardo's arms in retaliation. He can't deal with the idea of school right now, and he doesn't need to. It's less important than Eduardo wanting to date someone else or work somewhere else or get a divorce, and it can wait. He sighs, and Eduardo just smiles at him, a little stupidly.
It fades after a few seconds, and Mark frowns, unable to stop himself nudging forward, trying to bring it back.
"I was afraid," Eduardo says. "You were right about that part. If we screw this up-"
"Divorce," Mark says. "We've survived both marriage and divorce court."
"When you say it like that," Eduardo says, "It sounds dumb to suggest sex is what's going to finally manage to drive us away from each other."
"Precisely," Mark says. He tugs a little at Eduardo's shoulders, angling to get their mouths together.
Eduardo pulls away. "But that doesn't change the fact that it might. Especially considering our luck."
"Our luck is fine," Mark says. "We're fine."
But contrarily, that makes Eduardo's grip shift. His arms slide down and he hunches in a way that must near uncomfortable, hiding his face below Mark's ear. It's less like he's holding and more like he's holding on. "Why did you sign?" he asks.
"I didn't," Mark says.
Eduardo's hands clench against Mark's back. "Yeah," he says. "You did."
"No," Mark says, shaking his head. He pulls back to meet Eduardo's eyes, dark and confused and still so hurt. "I got copies of the papers from my lawyer last night. Neither of us signed the right ones, not that the mediator noticed. I told you he was an idiot. The divorce won't file."
Eduardo jerks away from him. Mark catches hold of his arms, doesn't let go. "You-" Eduardo's hovering between anger and upset, held in check only by confusion.
"I needed to see what you'd do," Mark says, talking quickly. He doesn't want to argue over this. He just needed to know. "You spent months doing this to us, I needed to see what would happen if you got what you wanted."
Eduardo pulls away completely, the last of the fabric of his shirt slipping past the pads of Mark's fingers with a rough burn. "You-really?
"Don't," Mark says, sharp, but Eduardo pauses and looks at him, and he looks miserable, too. Still. "Don't."
Eduardo comes back, slowly and almost reluctantly. His arm slides over Mark's shoulders, and one of his hands touches the front of Mark's hoodie. Mark grabs whole fistfuls of Eduardo's shirt, anchoring himself so Eduardo can't pull away again.
"I'm selfish," Mark says.
"Oh?" Eduardo asks, sarcastic.
"Yes," Mark says. "I'm selfish. I always have been. I haven't wanted this divorce from the beginning and I never pretended to."
"And?" Eduardo asks. He's gone quiet again, and his thumb is rubbing small circles against Mark's side, and Mark doesn't think he'll try to step away.
"If you'd been happy," Mark says, and stops. But Eduardo just keeps looking at him, dark-eyed, and Mark forces himself to finish. "If you'd been happy, we would've signed the right papers when they came back wrong and that-fine."
"That would've been fine?" Eduardo asks, a little faint, a little disbelieving.
"Yes," Mark says, grumbling. He wouldn't have wanted to be married to Eduardo anyway, if Eduardo had honestly wanted away from him. Mark releases his shirt and slides his hands under it instead, stepping back up against Eduardo. It's natural to talk to the hollow of Eduardo's throat like this; it'd be uncomfortable to crane his head back and meet his eyes. "I would've signed it if you wanted me to," he says. "If you had wanted out."
Eduardo stops breathing. Mark can hear the hitch when it happens, and feel it too, when all of Eduardo stops moving.
Then he sighs out, "Mark," almost like he's angry.
"What?" Mark asks defensively, and he fights a little when Eduardo tries to pull his head up, but they kiss instead of talk and Mark will deal with uncomfortable angles for that.
But they kiss longer and longer, and it's easier eventually to step back just a little, tilting his head and leaving his mouth slightly open and holding carefully in place when Eduardo slides one of his hands up under his hoodie and t-shirt to press, cool, against his back.
"You didn't have to prove that," Eduardo says after too long. Mark had almost thought they were done talking. "I know you care about me."
Mark makes a derisive noise, but it gets swallowed in the next kiss and sounded more like a moan, anyway. "I thought this whole thing was because you thought I didn't care about you."
"No," Eduardo says. "This whole thing is because I thought you weren't in love with me. I've always known you care about me."
"Always?" Mark asks sardonically.
"You're very bad at hiding things," Eduardo says. "You care about me and making me happy. But you didn't know you were in love with me, so it was really difficult to figure out."
"I think those are the same thing," Mark says, sliding his fingers under the loose knot of Eduardo's tie and pulling it down and down and off. "Caring and loving. One entails the other."
"For most people?" Eduardo says. "Probably. But I don't think they necessarily correlate for you."
"You know," Mark says, and takes a stumbling step backwards to pull them towards the couch. "All you've actually said to me so far has been insults and yelling."
"We're married, remember?" Eduardo says. "Everyone says that's all a relationship is after a while."
"I've never heard that," Mark protests, and pulls a little more firmly at Eduardo's shoulders.
"No," Eduardo says, pulling away and frowning at Mark. "We're not having sex on the couch again."
"Ever?" Mark asks curiously. He follows Eduardo to the stairs, and it's stupid to hold hands but Eduardo does it anyway. Mark twitches his fingers against Eduardo's palm.
"Well," Eduardo says. "Not for the first time again."
Mark hums and pulls his hand out of Eduardo's so he can pull his hoodie off as they go up the stairs.
"That's not going to be a pattern," Eduardo continues, content without Mark's input.
"Whatever," Mark says, and pushes Eduardo through his own bedroom door when he stalls in front of the two doorways. If either room is going to become the master bedroom, it's going to be Eduardo's. "Everyone probably already thought we were having sex all over the house."
"Fine," Eduardo says, wavering. "But no sex in the study. I work in there."
---
"And we're getting remarried," Eduardo says, much later. He's moved past sleepy and into the obnoxiously awake phase he apparently hits after Mark sucks his brain out through his dick.
"We can't, we never divorced," Mark reminds him absently. He does not have an obnoxiously awake phase, and he's occupied more right now with shoving all of Eduardo's limbs back to the proper side of the bed. Every time he manages to move him, Eduardo inches back over. Mark isn't sure this marriage thing is going to work after all.
"Don't be an ass, you'll survive a little bit of cuddling," Eduardo says, and holds on relentlessly. "But I'm serious about the marriage. We are having a proper ceremony and a real reception and you're going to attend both."
"Bite me," Mark says, but even he can tell it lacks conviction.
Eduardo smiles and, probably as a reward, allows Mark to wiggle him a little to the left. Having successfully reclaimed half of one of the pillows, Mark drops his head onto it and pretends he can't hear Eduardo furiously texting everyone they know.
Epilogue